As I’ve reflected on this situation, I’ve wondered if the practices of Toyota and other lean pioneers have been misunderstood. Kaizen is an important activity at Toyota and involves all employees. But new processes launched at Toyota are usually extraordinarily lean to begin with and post-launch kaizen is a small part of Toyota’s competitive advantage.

The secret lies in Toyota’s product/process development system that focuses on creating “profitable operational value streams” – to use a favorite phrase of the late Allen Ward. These streams have been thoroughly “pre-kaizened” by examining every step in the proposed production and fulfillment process long before launch.

The first step is to make sure someone is responsible for thinking about the whole process needed to bring a new product from order to delivery. By thinking about the production process at the same time the product design is being evaluated, it’s possible to optimize both.

The second step is to lay out the process on paper and consider the different ways that it might be conducted. For new types of products requiring new processes it is particularly important to consider a number of different ways the whole process and each step might be conducted and to conduct simple experiments to see which way works best. (This is the process development analogue of the Set Based Concurrent Engineering methods used to evaluate different approaches to the design of the product. It’s also a key element in the 3P Production Preparation Process now conducted by advanced lean organizations.)

The third step is to test any new ways of conducting process steps with simple prototypes – even cardboard mock-ups -- to learn how well they actually work. (Another element of 3P.) The knowledge gained from these experiments then needs to be written down and turned into the experience curves of the sort Toyota develops from experiments with simple prototypes of new products.

(In fact, this knowledge is Toyota’s great advantage in concurrently and rapidly developing new products and processes: At this point, most of Toyota’s production processes are highly standardized and fully documented. Most new product designs only need to comply with well-understood process requirements to launch as smoothing flowing streams. By contrast, most organizations I visit have poorly documented processes with weak standards and little real knowledge of trade-offs in designing a process one way versus another. They will need a lean leap in consciousness and practice in order to catch up.)

Once the best process is determined, which may result in changes to the product design as well, the next step is to finalize equipment designs and information management systems.

Finally, it’s time to develop standard work for every step in the value stream and standard management for the whole value stream. This includes a training plan for every employee, a plan for every part, and a maintenance plan for every piece of equipment.

If all of these actions have been completed by the start of production, the value stream should be very lean from the first item delivered. Kaizen will still be important, based on hansei (or reflection) about the performance of the process once operating, but it can start from a higher level in a more stable process so that additional rapid improvement is actually easier.

It’s my feeling that many organizations are now ready to elevate their level of play. As I hope I’ve made clear, this is not by de-emphasizing the idea of kaizen, but by performing the PDCA process that is at the heart of kaizen inside the development process. This will insure that every new value stream for every new product commences its productive life as a very lean stream.

Given the steady reduction in the length of product lives, I believe that it will become ever more important to achieve “process quality at the source”. Otherwise, the product may be ready to go out of production before process problems are ever addressed through kaizen as rework.